Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt

There was some irrigating to be attended to down at the “lands,” and for the next two hours Christopher was very busy. Then as he returned to the house, he suddenly remembered his unopened correspondence. It was near sundown, but there was half an hour to spare before counting-in time.

Looking around, he espied a seat – the same rustic bench where we first witnessed Violet’s stolen interview. The place was shady, and cool and inviting withal. Selwood sat down, and dragging the letters out of his pocket and having laid them out, face downwards, along the bench, proceeded to open them one by one.

They were mostly of the ordinary kind – business letters relating to the sale of stock or corn – an official notification or two – soon disposed of. But one he had opened near the last must have been of a different nature. First a puzzled look came into his eyes – then he guffawed aloud.

“Pray do not flatter yourself,” began the missive, dispensing entirely with the regulation formality of opening – “pray do not flatter yourself in the idea that I am in ignorance of your whereabouts. Clever as you may imagine yourself, not one of your disreputable movements takes place unknown to me. I know where you are now, and who is with you. But it is of no use. If you exercise your influence over that abandoned creature to the utmost she can never be anything but your mistress. For mark my words, Maurice Sellon, whatever you may do I will never set you free. You are bound to me by a tie that nothing but my own will or my death can sever. But I will never consent to play into your villainous hands or into those of your creature Violet Avory – ”

“Oh, good God in heaven,” cried Selwood, horror-stricken. “What in the world have I gone and done now! ‘Maurice Sellon! Violet Avory!’ Good Lord, what does it all mean?” Then, instinctively he did what he should have done at first, turned the sheet to glance at the signature. There it was.

“Your shamefully injured wife,

“Adela Sellon.”

“Oh, good Lord, I’ve done it now!” he cried again, the horrible truth dawning upon him that he had not only opened and read another man’s letter, but had surprised another man’s secret, and that a secret of a peculiarly awkward nature. How he anathematised his carelessness. He snatched up the envelope, which he had thrown down among the others. There was the address – plain as a pikestaff. Yet, stay, not so very plain after all. It was directed “M. Sellon, Esq.” But the long letters were dwarfed and the short extended. The “M” at a casual glance looked not unlike “Ch,” a common abbreviation on envelopes of Selwood’s longish Christian name. Then like lightning, his memory sped back to the day of his guest’s arrival and his own joke relative to each of them holding half their names in common. “We are both ‘Sells,’” he had said with a laugh, and now into what a cursed mistake had that coincidence led him.

Poor Chris groaned aloud as he thought of the awkward position in which his carelessness had placed him. It would have been bad enough had the letter been of an ordinary nature. But being such as it was, the probabilities that its real owner would believe in accident having anything to do with the matter were infinitesimal. No. He would certainly suspect him of a deliberate intention to pry into his affairs. And what made things worse was the fact of the other man being his guest.

But only momentarily did this idea serve to divert his thoughts from the extreme awkwardness of his own position. Violet Avory was his guest, too; and with far greater claim on his consideration than this stranger – for was she not under his care? And as the full force of the disclosure with which he had so involuntarily become acquainted – and its consequences – struck home to his mind, honest Chris felt fired with hot anger against the absent Sellon. What business had the latter – a married man – laying himself out to win poor Violet’s heart? That he had succeeded – and thoroughly succeeded – had been only too obvious to every member of the Sunningdale household – and that for some time past. No, no. Sellon had abused his hospitality in a shameful manner, and in so doing had almost forfeited any claim to consideration. Had he learned the ugly secret in the ordinary way Christopher would not have hesitated for a moment. He would have forbidden Sellon the house in terms which should leave no sort of margin for dispute. But then – the manner of his information. There lay the rub. Never in the whole course of his life had Christopher Selwood found himself in so difficult – so perplexing a situation.

Then he did the very worst thing he could have done. He resolved to take his wife into confidence in the matter at once. Bundling the whole heap of correspondence into his pocket again, he rose, and took his way to the sheep-kraals for the evening count-in. But it is to be feared that if Gomfana or old Jacob had carelessly left a sheep or two in the veldt that evening pro bono the jackals, their master was too uncertain in his count to be sure of it.

Mrs Selwood’s indignation at the disclosure was as great as that of her husband, but the method by which that disclosure had come about, womanlike, she dismissed as a comparative trifle. Indeed, had she been the one to open the letter, it is pretty safe to assert that so far from resting content with the fragment which Christopher had found more than enough, she would have read it through to the bitter end. For to the feminine mind the axiom that “the end justifies the means” is a thoroughly sound one. Not one woman in fifty can resist the temptation of reading a letter which she is not meant to read when it is safe to do so, and not one in ten thousand if she suspects any particular reason why she should be left in ignorance of its contents.

“Well, now, Hilda, what’s to be done?” said Selwood, when he had told her – for with scrupulous honour he had refused to let her see one word of the letter itself. It was only intended for one person’s eyes. It was horribly unfortunate that two had seen it, but it would be worse still to extend the privilege to a third.

“What’s to be done?” she echoed. “It’s a shocking business, and the man must be an arrant scoundrel. The only thing to be done is, in the first place, to request him not to return here; in the next, to sound Violet herself. Things may not have gone so far as we think, but I’m very much afraid they have. Why, latterly the girl has become quite changed, and for a week or so before he left she could hardly bear him out of her sight.”

“Yes, that’ll be the best plan, I suppose,” acquiesced Chris, ruefully.

“I hope Violet will show a proper amount of sense and self-respect,” concluded Mrs Selwood, in a tone which seemed to convey that the hope was but a forlorn one. “But remember, Chris, we must take up a firm position and stand to it. The girl is very young, and we are responsible for her until she returns home, and indeed I begin to think the sooner she does that the better, now. She is very young, as I said, but she has turned one and twenty, and there’s no knowing what mad suicidal act of folly a girl of her temperament, and legally her own mistress, may be capable of under these circumstances.”

“It’ll be a difficult thing for me to explain matters about the letter,” said Selwood, ruefully. “The fellow is sure to scout the idea of a mistake. However, there’s no help for it. I must explain, and that, too, at the earliest opportunity.”

Tact is not, as a rule, a feminine characteristic, but Hilda Selwood possessed a larger share of it than many women with considerably the advantage over herself in training and general knowledge of the world. She began as she had said by literally “sounding” Violet. But there was something in the latter’s manner which seemed to show that the news of Sellon’s previous appropriation was no news to her at all – in fact, that she had known it all along. Finally she admitted as much, and rather gloried in it.

Then ensued a tolerably lively scene. What if he was chained to a fiend of a woman whose sole end and object had always been to make life a burden to him? burst forth Violet, with livid face and flashing eyes. The creature would die some day, it was to be hoped, and then ten thousand heavens were as nothing to the happiness before them both. Give him up? Not she! She would rather die a thousand times over, and would do so first. She was his real wife in the sight of God, she declared, as the stock blasphemous balderdash runs, whatever the other woman was in name, and so forth. Rebuke, reason, appeals to pride, to self-respect were all alike in vain before this furious outburst of uncontrollable passion. The girl seemed possessed of a very demon. She hurled reproaches at her hostess and friend, taxing her with playing the spy upon her – conspiracy, amateur detective business, everything – and declared she would sooner sleep in the veldt than pass another night under that roof. Finally she went off into a fit of shrieking, violent hysterics, and in this condition articulated things that set Hilda Selwood’s ears tingling with outraged disgust.

“The most painfully shocking scene I ever witnessed in my life, and I hope and trust I never may again,” was the latter’s comment to her husband some time afterwards.

“And the curious part of it is I can’t for the life of me make out what the deuce she can see in the fellow,” had been Christopher’s rejoinder. “He’s not much to look at, and although he’s good company in a general way, I don’t think his brain-box holds a very close fit.”

A common enough speculation, and one which must ever remain in the category of things speculative. “What the deuce can she see in the fellow?” Who is to say?

Chapter Twenty Seven.

The Key at Last

“Well, Fanning, I guess this time it’s all U.P.”

Renshaw made no reply. He gazed wearily at the great iron-bound hills, whose cliffs were now beginning to reflect the glow of the declining sun – and chipped mechanically at the rocks with the geological hammer in his hand. His mind upon the subject was much the same as that of his companion; but in actual fact his despondency was far greater. Still with the desperate tenacity born of the habits of a lifetime, he was unwilling to give in.

Four days have gone by since we last saw our two adventurers bivouacking under the cliff – four days of threading mazy defiles and climbing the roof-like sides of mountains – four days of burning, sweltering exhaustion, ever eager, ever energetic with the tenfold vigour of a fierce hunt for riches. Three out of the four have been devoted to nothing but prospecting for their quest, for they passed the third beacon – the third turret-headed mountain of the clue – early on the day following that on which we last saw them – and now, worn out with toil and disappointment! they are resting in the sweltering afternoon heat deep down in a rock-bound valley where not a breath of air can come – not a whisper of a stir to relieve the oven-like glow which is rendering Sellon, at any rate, almost light-headed.

“A blank draw this time,” growled the latter, wearily. “And what an awful business it has been to get here! I wouldn’t go through it again for a thousand pounds. And then, just think what a brace of fools we shall look to the people at Sunningdale.”

Then as if the thought of Sunningdale – and what he had left there – put the crowning stone upon his misery, Sellon proceeded to curse most vehemently.

With weariness and disappointment, misfortune had overtaken our two friends since we saw them last. While riding along the burning sandy bottom of a dreary defile towards evening, the led horse had inadvertently trodden on a puff-adder – which, sluggish brute that it is, rarely gets out of the way. Blowing himself out with rage, this hideous reptile had flung up his squat bloated length, fastening his fangs in the leg of the unfortunate horse. The animal was doomed, and, indeed, in less than an hour was in its expiring throes.

Now, this was a terrible misfortune, for not only was the climbing and digging gear among the pack-load, but also the water-skin, and by far the greater part of their provisions; nearly the whole of the latter had to be abandoned, and loading up all that was indispensable upon their riding horses – already fast losing their former freshness – the two adventurers had pushed on. But by now the contents of the water-skin had run very low indeed; were it not for the lucky find of a tiny pool of slimy fetid water standing in a cavity of a rock, the horses would have given out already. As it was, they drank it up every drop, and felt the better for it.

“I doubt whether that bag of bones will carry me back, as it is,” said Sellon, gloomily, eyeing his dejected steed, now too weary to graze.

“Sellon,” said Renshaw, earnestly, still gazing around and completely ignoring his companion’s last remark – “Sellon, I can’t make it out now any more than the first time I was here. We have followed out the clue most minutely: ‘Straight from the smaller turret-head, facing the setting sun. Within a day’s ride.’ Now, we have explored and surveyed every point westerly between north and south, and within a good deal more than a day’s ride, thoroughly and exhaustively. There isn’t the shadow of a trace of any such valley, or rather crater, as old Greenway describes. But let’s go over the thing carefully again.”

Suddenly Maurice sat up from his weary lounging attitude.

“By Jove, Fanning, but you’ve given me an idea,” he said, speaking eagerly and quickly.

“One moment,” said Renshaw, holding up his hand. “I have an idea, too, and indeed it’s astonishing it should never have struck me before. You must remember old Greenway was talking very disjointedly at the end of his yarn – poor old chap. He was nearly played out. Well, I tried to take down his words exactly as he uttered them. Look at this ‘Straight from – the smaller one – facing the setting sun. Within – day’s ride.’ Does nothing strike you now?”

“Can’t say it does,” growled Sellon, “except that the old sinner must have been telling a most infernal lie. We’ve spent the last four days fossicking around within a day’s ride of his turret-top mountain, and devil a valley of the kind he describes exists.”

“Well, what strikes me is this. He may have meant to say ‘Within two days’, or three days’, or four days’ ride.’ See?”

“Yes. If that’s so he might as well have told us there was plenty of gold to be found between this and Morocco. It would have helped us about as much. But now I’ll give you my idea. It sounds ‘tall,’ and I dare say you’ll laugh.”

“Never mind. Drive on,” rejoined Renshaw, looking up from the paper which he had been studying intently.

“Well, you mentioned the word ‘crater’ just now. If this ‘valley’ of old Stick-in-the-mud’s really exists, it is, as you say, a crater-shaped concern. Now we’ve fooled away days in hunting for this place at the bottom of each and every mountain around. What if, after all, we ought to be looking for it at the top?”

An eager flash leaped from the other’s eyes.

“By Jove! That is an idea!” he burst forth.

“Eh! Not a bad one, I think?” said Sellon, complacently.

“No. It just isn’t.”

For a few moments both sat staring at each other. Sellon was the first to speak.

“How about that queer cock’s-comb-looking peak we came round this morning?” he said. But Renshaw shook his head.

“Not that. There’s no room for any such place on top of it.”

“Not, eh? Look here, Fanning. Have you ever been up it?”

“No. But I’ve been to the top of every blessed berg of any considerable height around. I never went up that because it commands no range of ground that the others don’t.”